


Matriarch

by cjmarlowe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Formerly Anonymous, Gen, inappropriate handling of human remains, kink meme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-13
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock brings John home to meet Mummy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matriarch

**Author's Note:**

> For the sherlockbbc_fic prompt: John meets Mummy Holmes and is surprised to find she looks like: [ [this](http://www.dogandcatshelter.com/assets/images/mummy.gif) ]

The house in the country was well beyond John's means, not just in reality but in his most successful fantasies as well, but it wasn't a _country house_ , and so by those standards it was comfortably modest. It was all a matter of perspective, he supposed. Sherlock and Mycroft might have had a leg up, it seemed, but not so much of one that they could've lived an idle life.

As if Sherlock knew the meaning of an idle life.

"Mummy is waiting upstairs," said Mycroft as soon as John and Sherlock stepped inside, hands clasped behind his back and turning his head to look ostentatiously at the staircase rising from the centre of the room. John could imagine him having stood there for hours just to be in exactly the right place when they arrived, though more likely he had his assistant call when they reached the front doors.

The house smelled musty and there was a fine layer of dust on everything, but the floors at least showed evidence that people did occasionally come and go. Certainly not cleaners, from the look of it. For some reason, despite Sherlock's cavalier attitude towards safety in their home, John had imagined that the Holmes family estate would be kept more fastidiously.

He supposed now that the children were all gone, Mrs. Holmes might have been keeping to one wing of the house. Or at least that's what he told himself.

"We need a moment," said Sherlock.

"You're already late."

"It's not as though she's going anywhere." Mycroft just sniffed at him then turned his back and headed up the stairs, the wood creaking under his every step.

"I can wait down here," offered John. "She's your mother, she probably hasn't any interest in your flatmate."

"Nonsense, Mummy always did like meeting my friends," said Sherlock. "Or she would have if I'd ever brought any around. She won't object to your presence."

'Wouldn't object' wasn't really the same as 'have an interest' but Sherlock seemed to get the two mixed up in the rest of his life so why not here too. "You're not going to have a row in front of me, are you? Because that's never not awkward."

"Of course not!" said Sherlock irritably, then, "Or do you mean me and Mycroft? Because I make no promises there."

"Not even in front of Mummy?

Sherlock didn't really respond to that, and looked at John in that way of his that meant he didn't intend to. "Don't worry, this visit will be mercifully brief. Once a year is quite enough."

"What, we won't be staying for supper?"

"Would you want to eat here?" gesturing around the disused house.

"I eat in our flat, don't I?" muttered John. "Well, all right, if you want to get this done then let's get this done. Mycroft's waiting."

"Yes, he is, isn't he?" said Sherlock, looking up the stairs with a half-smile on his face as though considering waiting just a little bit longer for the sole purpose of pushing Mycroft's buttons.

"And so is your mother."

"Yes, isn't she always?" said Sherlock dryly, and finally began to ascend.

John followed more slowly, saw the drop cloths draped over the furniture in the room to the right of the stairs and felt uneasy about this whole visit. Sherlock's relationship with his family had always been something of a mystery to John—when your older brother was your nemesis, what did that say about everyone else?—but this was downright unsettling. And this coming from a man who routinely came home to body parts in the kitchen.

"This way," said Sherlock. "We try not to put her in direct sunlight."

"What? Why?" said John, his attention back on Sherlock and on the room at the end of the hall, the door already slightly ajar.

"It speeds up deterioration," said Sherlock, and pushed open the door.

John was a few steps inside before Sherlock's words even really penetrated, but by the time they did he saw for himself the state of the Holmes matriarch. Sitting in a plush chair by the heavily draped window, her hands in her lap and a bible on the table at her elbow next to an empty teacup and a reading lamp, sat the preserved corpse of Mrs. Holmes. Her eyes were sunken hollows, her skin dry and moulded to the bone, and behind her receding lips John could see a horribly grinning set of teeth.

"What _is_ this?" said John, taking a stumbling step backwards. "What's _wrong_ with you?"

"It was her last request," said Mycroft with a put-upon sigh. "To continue to preside over this house rather than pass it on to either of us. She never did approve."

"I'm pretty sure that's not what she meant!"

"It's precisely what she meant," said Sherlock, and John took another horrified step back when Sherlock went forward to kiss her withered, dry cheek. "You didn't know Mummy."

John just looked from one to the other, and wondered which one was going to put a wig on and come after him in the shower. Sherlock had a lot of what John kindly called quirks, but this was too far, much too far. John had seen some horrible things in Afghanistan, things that still haunted his dreams, but nothing like this.

"I need to get out of here."

"Before you're introduced?" said Mycroft, and God help him, John was pretty sure he thought this was _funny_. "You're practically _family_ now, John. Anyone who can put up with my brother for more than a week deserves some kind of official recognition, don't you think?"

He couldn't even look at her, the whole scene was just grotesque, but Sherlock was looking at him, not staring him down but _looking_ at him, and John could see something in that look. A question that Sherlock wouldn't ask. A request that he didn't want to voice but nonetheless wanted John to fulfill, in as sincere a way as he knew how to express. An entreaty for John to understand.

And the very fact that John knew him well enough to read an entire paragraph into that look meant that despite everything, he wasn't going to have them locked up, and he wasn't going to leave.

John handled dead bodies for a living. He could do this. For Sherlock. Being friends with Sherlock Holmes, after all, gifted you with a truly unhealthy sense of the macabre.

"As long as we're really not staying for supper," he said finally, and joined them.


End file.
